Further Reading

Responses and articles about 27th Brno Biennial 2016

Responses and articles about 27th Brno Biennial 2016, 2015 – 2017.

Collected and designed by Radim PeškoRadim Peško (1976) is a graphic designer based in London. He works in the field of type design, editorial and exhibition projects. In 2010 he has established his RP Digital Type Foundry that specializes on typefaces that are both formally and conceptually distinctive. His work includes identity for Secession Vienna, typefaces for identities of Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Aspen Art Museum, Fridericianum, Berlin Biennale 8, various work for the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Bedford Press London or a long-term collaboration with artist Kateřina Šedá. He has lectured at many schools including Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, ÉCAL Lausanne, HFK Bremen, KISD Cologne, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, Sint-Lucas Ghent, University of Seoul. Since 2011 he is part of the curatorial board of the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno., Tomáš CeliznaTomáš Celizna (1977) is interested in graphic design in connection with new technologies. He is a founding partner of design studio dgú in Prague (2001 to 2005), recipient of J. W. Fulbright Scholarship (2006), and holds MFA in graphic design from Yale University School of Art (2008). He currently lives and works independently in Amsterdam. Collaborations include, among others, OASE Journal for Architecture, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Since 2011 he is a lecturer in graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and a member of the curatorial team of the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno., Adam MacháčekAdam Macháček (1980) is a graphic designer. Following studies at the AAAD in Prague, Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and ÉCAL in Lausanne, he co-founded in 2004 studio Welcometo.as in Lausanne and is a member of 201∞ Designers collective. His work includes publications, exhibition catalogues, illustrations and identities. Collaborations include, among others, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Théâtre de Vevey (seasons 2003–2012), Galerie Rudolfinum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chronicle Books, Editions Pyramyd, Museum of Czech Literature, Brno House of Arts, California College of the Arts, Airbnb. For Brno Biennial he initiated and organized exhibitions Work from Switzerland (2004) and From Mars (2006, together with Radim Peško). Since 2011 he is a member of the curatorial team of the International Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno. He lives and works in Berkeley. & Michaela Banzetová

Dressed in Black:
Spektrum and Lothar Reher

Dressed in Black extends out of the exhibition A Shelf for Lothar, staged in 2016 at the 27th Brno Biennial of Graphic Design. The book reproduces 115 jackets from the Spektrum series, the work of German designer and artist Lothar Reher.

Spektrum, published in East Berlin by Volk und Welt from 1968 to 1993, embodied the ideals of accessibility and inclusiveness epitomised by the wave of mid-twentieth century paperbacks, in their inherent simplicity and usability. And yet, despite its mass readership, the series’ dense monochrome imagery has an uneasy air of mystery, with often oblique relationship to the books’ contents.

Reher designed all but one of the series’ 279 titles, photographing and producing montages and collages more or less single handedly. Recurring motifs such as skulls, faces, museological artefacts and spherical objects reveal a long-term visual grammar, with later books in the series often echoing back to earlier designs. These taxonomies formed the basis of the shelf display in Brno, and aim to gain insight into Reher’s distinctive interpretation of this considerable body of literature.

Alongside actual size reproductions of the jackets, Dressed in Black features essays by Regine Ehleiter and Roland Früh which further elaborate on the transactions between book and exhibition formats.

Part: 2 The State of the Graphic Design Exhibition Today
United States of America; Poland (International Poster Biennale, Warsaw); South Korea (Graphic Design, 2005-2015, Seoul)

Part: 3 Japanese Graphic Design and the History of Exhibitions and Collections
Chronology of the Japanese Exhibitions; Exhibitions and Collections; A door must be either shut or open? (Exhibition as an attitude expression – post obitum of Japanese Graphic Design); Design Shamanism

Roma

Zdeněk Ziegler
For Eyes Only

A comprehensive monograph presents the work of leading Czech typographer and graphic designer, author of more than three hundred film, theater and exhibition posters, hundreds of publications, including an exceptional series of bibliophiles, dozens of record sleeves, a series of postage stamps or logotypes. Through more than 400 reproductions the book reveals author’s crucial realizations since the late 1950s to the present (eg posters for films Winnetou series, The Pink Panther, Czech films of Jaromil Jireš, František Vláčil, Karel Zeman and Jiří Menzel, or book series Máj, Jiskry, Váhy, Oikoymenh). Zdeněk Ziegler received numerous prestigious national and international awards and in 2012 entered the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Design of the Czech Republic.

The personality and work of Zdeněk Ziegler is explored through several texts. The book begins with an interview with Karel Hvížďala. Each discipline is then approached by several authors: Marta Sylvestrová (poster art), Alan Záruba (typography and corporate design), Jan Rous (editorial design), Jan Galuška (stamps), encounters and international context are described by the German typographers Olaf Leu and Albrecht Ade, teaching engagements by American designer Peg Faimon and collaboration with Zdeňek Sýkora is remembered by Lenka Sýkorová.

Aldo van Eyck
Seventeen Playgrounds

With his distinctive playground designs, Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck has left his mark on generations of children growing up in Amsterdam. An important aspect of his designs is his strive to stimulate the imagination and ingenuity of the child, which is visible in the minimalistic shapes of the play equipment. In order to give the Amsterdam children their own recognizable domain, Van Eyck developed a web of over seven hundred playgrounds scattered across the city. Of these hundreds of playgrounds you nowadays only find a few remaining play elements that have to share their space with new play equipment, many have completely disappeared and only seventeen playgrounds are still intact. Aldo van Eyck, Seventeen Playgrounds is a pocket size tour guide that brings you to seventeen remaining playgrounds in the centre of Amsterdam. While you are moving from one playground to the next, you will get to know more about the city, Aldo van Eyck and his ideas about designing for children.

Conceived and designed by Anna van LingenAnna van Lingen is a graphic designer working on a number of self-initiated projects which investigate
town planning, architecture and the ageing of cities and buildings. She works closely with Denisa Kollarová,
on an ongoing project centered on children’s play and playspaces. At the beginning of 2016 Seventeen Playgrounds, a guide to Aldo van Eyck’s designs for children in the centre of Amsterdam was published by Lecturis as a result of their research. Anna van Lingen finished her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2013 and lives and works in Amsterdam. and Denisa KollarováDenisa Kollarová lives and works in Amsterdam, where she and Anna van Lingen began their collaboration after graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2013. Ruins, public spaces, social architecture, city mapping and utopian architectural planning are core topics which keep her curiosity alive in various books, exhibitions and lectures. In addition to Seventeen Playgrounds her ongoing projects include Under My Own Construction of Ruins and Migration of Form.

Taking a Line for a Walk
Assignments in Design Education

Draw your classmate. Look at your shoe. Make a horizon. Let a river of ink flow down a sheet of paper, make an egg appear as if it were floating. Create music with Illustrator, explain the world in ten images, and draw a letter in three seconds. Now say goodbye to the computer. Become a human algorithm. Clean your apartment, make a picnic, build a kite, and tell a joke. Don’t take it too seriously. Make it simple, small, big, more. Do not fear failure. Work quickly and roughly. Work accurately and systematically. Think more, design less. Design is visual pollution, design is always for others, design changes people’s lives. The world is changing. What can you do? What if? Why? Be convincing. Be ambitious. Be on time. Come prepared. Work alone. Work together. Observe, examine, imagine, conceive, present, discuss, repeat. Start over. Begin from zero.

Taking a Line for a Walk brings attention to something that is often neglected: the language and verbal artefacts of design instruction. Including contemporary and historical examples, this book is a compendium of 224 assignments in design education.

This publication departed from the exhibition Taking a Line for a Walk, part of the 26th Brno Biennial 2014, 19 June – 26 October 2014, The Moravian Gallery in Brno